So what are people expecting from this game? For me this is the one we should win from the first four but that depends if the forwards start working harder. If they do then it can only be a victory for us, if they dont then we may come away empty handed. Id stick with the same half back pairing and team for this game but expect a major improvement from the likes of Houghton, Arundel and mainly the front row.

It's at home, but I still have doubts, as you say, Lynch, O'Meley et al need to raise their game.

fc smarting over last weeks loss at leeds, bradford brimming with confidence after easing past a poor wakefield team (by reports) and will want revenge for the mullering we gave them at odslum at the end of last season! hard to call this one, whoever gets on top and in front by a couple of scores first will win, hopefully us!

We need to be 10 minutes faster at each PTB otherwise I see Bradford deploying an efficient rush defence a la Leeds and reaping the rewards. Some more direct forward scooting off the back of it pulling markers around would be of benefit as well.

I'm expecting/wanting a win and a much improved performance.

need to close Sammut down - he looked very good in the highlights against Wakefield (albeit against poor defence)

expecting evidence of a few players being tanned in training, as well as less stupid errors, and an overall more polished performance

i reckon we'll see a quicker start and an early try to settle the nerves and build some confidence

after that we'll hopefully play more to our potential with less dropped ball

Start Lineham after his two brilliant tries for York at the weekend. I'd not change anything else for now.

why would you start lineham - crookes had a good game against the world champions and kept hall out of the game for most (halls try came as a result of a run through the middle and an arundel miss).

i'm gonna try to be positive here. our players may have benefitted from being in a high intensity game first up - it could bring them up to speed literally. secondly, there will be no disruption to the team immediately before kick off like happened at leeds. thirdly some of the key players surely can't play as badly. lastly we are at home where we only lost once last year. i'll go for us to win narrowly

Whatever happens during the game, I hope the crowd get behind the team and try to give them a lift.

We have a passionate set of fans but I worry that we'll get the negative atmosphere of either moaning & berating the players or pin-drop silence as we've had so many times over the last few years when things aren't going our way.

I was as disappointed as anyone about last weeks display but we need to give the team time to gel and the best we can do is back the team.

I expect us to raise the bar, coz us owe the supporters one

we do need to get behind the team more, maybe we should just get an annoying brass band like Leeds

People are talking as though we saw the usual Sheadingley capitulation, which wasn't what happened at all. We were very competitive for an hour and when fatigue hit Leeds were clinical.
The more worrying thing for me was how quickly the players heads went down.

Plenty on here who like to play their own instruments.

aye, but that's frowned upon in public, usually

just watched the highlights of the bradford v wakey game and whilst bradford scored some good tries, it has to be said there was some truly shocking tackling attempts from the wakefield side so the large margin of victory owed as much to wakey's errors as bradfords good play. in fact though i've only seen highlights, all of the games seemed to show some pretty poor defensive efforts. hopefully we can put this down to the early season

FC smarting over last weeks loss at leeds, bradford brimming with confidence after totally destroying a surprisingly very poor, semingly complacent wakefield team (by observation) and will want revenge for the total utter and complete mullering you gave us at Odsal at the end of last season! hard to call this one, whoever gets on top and in front by a couple of scores first will win, hopefully us!

Which all suggests it should be quite an interesting game...!

I doubt any Bulls fan is expecting to come across anything like such a shambles of an opposition pack as we did on Sunday. Santa only comes once a year, after all. Friday will be a very much bigger ask.

Agree with that but the issue I have is our attack was appauling. Hardly any line breaks and no offloads. Leeds defence was excellent but if we don't improve we will lose as Bulls have points in them.

We should win the game if we play well.

I have them down as deffo top 6 IMO paulm

Ive got a sweepstake running on the first time Briscoe gets Booed or told to F Off to Oz ,

12 mins is mine

First time he makes any kind of mistake.

No idea about the wakefield game but Bradford played really well against us (Leeds) in the pre season game, they were fit, fast and up for the game, far from the number maker uppers they were last year.

Do i have to take the warmu up into account, this could prove tricky